sanctuary
by Ralph E. Silvering
Summary: Bonnie reflects on why she sent her magic to Damon.
1. Chapter 1

_Someone to Lean On_

**Disclaimer: Just a quick one shot on Bonnie's feelings about Damon during Season 6. I'm loving the entire Bonnie and Damon storyline this season. After Katherine, she's my favorite character, and I just think the writers could do so much more with her. Please tell me what you think.**

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Bonnie Bennett had never told him, and she doubted she ever would, but Damon Salvatore was her sanctuary.

She had no idea when this had happened. She had no idea when he had become the person she turned to when she really needed help. Bonnie prided herself on her independence. She was the caretaker; the one with all the power and the intelligence and the ability to sacrifice herself for others. She was always the one people called when they needed help, and yet…

When it was her turn, when she needed someone to give her a leg up, a new perspective, a bit of an edge, that person always turned out to be Damon.

Damon always had a plan. Sure they were stupid, borderline suicidal and generally involved someone dying, but at the end of the day, Damon's plans worked.

Looking back on it, whenever Bonnie needed to call the Salvatore brothers, it was Damon she generally called. He was the one she'd looked to first to help deal with the Katherine situation when Elena's twin had first arrived back in town. Damon was the one who'd successfully divined that she would have to die in order to defeat Klaus and had come up with a plan to help her fake her death and put off the inevitable.

It was Damon who had decided to take her mother's life, instead of her own, when the Mikaelsons gave the Salvatores only two options to save Elena's life. It was Damon who had had her back when she was becoming lost in Expressionism, and it was Damon the magic led her towards after Jeremy's death.

And now it was to Damon that she sent her magic.

She had realized Damon's place in her life as she made the slow trudge through the woods with Kai and her stuffed bear in order to take them both home again. Even running from the sociopath had not worked to set her free. Kai was a wily one – it was why he and Damon had butted heads so often – and she knew that if she wasn't careful, he would divine what spell she used, steal her magic and escape.

Well, she wasn't going to take that chance. Kai showed no signs of redemption; he was a smooth-talking, opportunistic, self-absorbed murderer.

And sure, Damon Salvatore was also all of those things, but the different wasn't, Damon Salvatore wasn't _just _those things. He loved and he sought forgiveness, he fought for the ones he cared about and he was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself if it insured the safety of the few people he cared about. Bonnie knew that he would make the same choice as her. She also knew that Stefan and Elena would have discovered Damon's sacrifice and rescued him.

She only hoped that Damon discovered _her_ sacrifice and felt enough for her to attempt the same.

She wouldn't have placed her trust in him before these last six months, but she had been completely honest when she'd told him that she wouldn't have wanted to spend that time with very many other people.

It was a strange, strange world when Damon Salvatore made the list of her favorite people.

The man had tried to kill her, for God's sake. He'd a_ctually _killed Jeremy.

But Bonnie had learned this lesson long ago; vampire morality was different than human or witch morality. They were not entirely human anymore and thus they saw the world completely differently. So things that Bonnie would have condemned without a chance of redemption in a human – what she rightly condemned in the witch, Kai – she accepted and even made a stab at forgiveness for a vampire. She had gone through the doubt, the questioning of the morality of her own actions in letting her vampire friends commit horrible acts when Caroline had been turned. And when Elena had been turned she saw again how even the most righteous of humans was changed by the process.

And so when Damon Salvatore had finally let her see that he felt remorse for his actions as a vampire…..well, she was fairly sure that that constituted him being on the course of redemption. And it would be just as bad for her to condemn him now, as it would be for him to murder someone again.

Kai, on the other hand, was complete scum.

Sure, there was some chemistry with him, but it was entirely on his side. The man-child had been locked up in a magical prison – alone – for twenty years. He would have had chemistry with a rock if it deigned to talk to him.

Plus there was the niggling fact that he had shot her, was blackmailing her and threatening to steal her magic, and should no signs of not immediately going back to killing more innocents if she let him out.

So she wasn't.

And he sure as hell wasn't going to get his hands on her magic, for she'd sent it to a safe place.

And as he roared at her, and tried in vain to find Miss Cuddles, Bonnie reflected again on exactly why she'd sent her magic to Damon.

And the only answer was that he was her sanctuary.

She remembered that hug they had shared on the island. Death removed all sorts of magical compulsion, and her first death had restored that particular forgotten image to her. She had been high on dark magic, reeling from Jeremy's death, and so out of her mind that she hadn't even thought about grabbing him and holding on tight.

But Damon had opened his arms to her first, and he had held on just as tightly.

She remembered closing her eyes and feeling safe; safe for the first time in what felt like forever. It was as if Damon would help her. She knew what to do, and how to do it, but it was as if now someone was there to help her, and as though a burden had been lifted.

Bonnie had spent so much of her life alone and left behind. She had never really had a mother, and her father had hardly ever deigned to stop by. Her Grandmother had loved her, but it had never quite filled that void of having actual parents who loved her enough to stay for her. And then her Grandmother had been taken far too soon.

But her Grandmother had stayed anyway. She had stayed in the afterlife and made sure that Bonnie was alright before she passed on. And Damon had been willing to stay with her in this hell too, even if it meant that he would have to leave Elena behind forever. He hadn't even thought twice about it.

But then she hadn't thought twice about sending him home – even if it meant her own death – either.

Bonnie vaguely wondered if her Grandmother had known, somehow, that Damon would die with her; if she had planned it that way. Somehow. Because everyone else seemed to know. Klaus promised to continue Damon's torture to get her on board with his plan. That Vampire Hunter on the island had kidnapped Damon to get to her, and even Silas had threatened her with Damon's death in order to prevent her from destroying him.

It was as though her enemies had known something that she did not.

She wanted him to find that bear, and she wanted him to keep it safe. Most of all though, she wanted to find a way out of this hell-hole, with or without Damon's help, and make it back home. She wanted Jeremy's smile, and Elena's and Caroline's laughter. She wanted to call her mother, and go out to lunch with Matt. She even wanted to see Tyler and Stefan again. She wanted her Physics study group and the dwarf Professor who taught the most boring class in school; the History of Medicine.

She wanted to leave Kai behind and make him feel the weight of his crimes.

But most of all, Bonnie Bennett wanted to make it home and have Damon Salvatore wrap her in his arms again. Because then, and only then, would she believe that she had made it back.

For he was her sanctuary.

**Endnote: What did you think? Do you want a one-shot of Bonnie and Damon having adventures in 1994?**


	2. necessary

NECESSARY

**Disclaimer: I couldn't help myself, and just had to write another little one-shot. Takes place after Kai stabs Bonnie outside his parents' house in Oregon. I own nothing from **_**The Vampire Diaries. **_**Enjoy!**

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It took Bonnie over two hours to walk to the nearest town from Kai's old house.

But it only took her fifteen minutes to break into a car and hotwire it.

She had Damon to thank for that. In fact, it had been one of the first things that they had shared without either of them walking away in anger after yelling at one another. It had been a long time before they had found Damon's car, and neither had fancied walking into town every other week for groceries and then lugging it all back on foot.

Damon had told her emphatically that vampire speed did not make him a pack mule.

She had called him a selfish bastard.

And it had all degenerated from there until Damon suggested that they "borrow" a car. She had agreed somewhat hesitantly, but finding no real reason against it, considering the fact that they were the only people here, and thus the cars did not belong to anyone. He had turned it into an impromptu lecture during which he told her how to choose the cars without alarms – although he claimed to be able to bypass those without a problem given enough time – and how to both break into the car, and to start it without the key.

She had called him a delinquent but had listened carefully, because you never knew when such information would come in handy, and Bonnie loved information in all its forms.

And come in handy it did.

Bonnie silently thanked Damon, and swore never to tell him about this, as she drove back from Oregon to Mystic Falls. Not that she would ever get a chance to tell him anything again…

She sang loudly to drown out the silence, refusing to admit that she missed his sarcastic, irreverent presence.

At all.

When she ran out of songs she recited Socrates and Sun-Tzu and Shakespeare.

She ran through Fermat's Last Theorem.

She named the planets and their moons, and their relative positions in the sky at this time of year.

In this fake world.

Where she was.

Alone.

Except for that murderous bastard, Kai.

It took several days for Bonnie to make her way across the country. She made sure to stop at motels and take food from stores whenever she got hungry. She even tried to sightsee a bit, because she'd never been to this part of the country. But everything was silent and still and empty, and she couldn't enjoy it. She even ran out of things to recite.

She took CDs and listened to them.

She tried learning French.

Nothing helped.

She got back to Mystic Falls around midnight on the fourth day. She hadn't felt like stopping for dinner or a rest and had just kept going until the familiar sight of Elena's old house convinced her that she was almost home. She did stop to pick up Damon's car from the woods where Kai had left it.

The sociopathic murderer himself was nowhere to be found.

Bonnie pulled up to the Salvatore Boarding House at last. The lights were on in the main room because Damon had left them on a timer. He was obsessed with a well-run and orderly house. He'd told her once that it drove Stefan mad – which was part of the reason he did it – because his brother was more of a pack-rat.

Bonnie didn't even bother changing her blood-stained shirt or drinking a glass of water. She went right up to Damon's room, curled up on the bed, and tried to convince herself that she wasn't crying.

Or that she didn't miss him.

Bonnie Bennett did not cry for herself.

She had cried for her Grans, and for her mother, and for her father. And for Jeremy.

But she did not cry for herself. She was strong, and she was used to being on her own. She only cried when she lost those she had deemed to be necessary to her.

She wondered when Damon Salvatore had become essential to her; when he had become necessary. She didn't think it was just in the past few months they had spent together, all alone, although that had been the final nail in the coffin. So to speak. If you could use that pun about vampires. Bonnie gave a weak laugh at her questionable humor and then looked around furtively in case anyone had noticed that, but of course there was no one there.

Luckily actually, because Bonnie had no desire to deal with Kai at the moment.

If she was being completely honest with herself, it had probably started all the way back when Damon had first arrived in town and was looking for Emily's necklace. He had waited for her outside the school and had half-threatened her and half offered her help. Bonnie had been afraid, but she had also noticed how incredibly blue his eyes were.

She had cursed herself for finding him attractive.

Emily's journal had described both Salvatore brothers back in 1864; Stefan, the quiet, studious one, and Damon, the charming, rebellious, rapscallion who was the despair of his father. Emily had loved both brothers – in an older sister kind of way – and Bonnie knew that was the real reason she had made them their daylight rings, not because she owed a debt to Katherine Pierce. But reading between the lines, Bonnie noticed that Emily had felt for Damon more. There had been care and empathy in her words, still powerful and fresh over a century and a half later, and Bonnie had felt them.

It was why she could never kill Damon Salvatore, even when she knew that he deserved it.

And then Elena had fallen in love with him.

If there was one thing Bonnie was sure of, it was that Elena Gilbert would always come first in Damon's world. The way he had talked about her, the fact that he had never been able to hurt her – except through his own impetuosity – even while his humanity was mostly turned off, had told Bonnie all she had needed to know about her own little crush on him.

So she had moved on. She had dated Jeremy, and fallen in love with him. She had convinced herself – and the rest of the world – that she hated Damon Salvatore.

But there were times when she couldn't convince herself. She had held onto him on that island in Canada. She had reached for his hand as they were both about to die. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder one night in this very house.

He hadn't mentioned it and neither had she. But it had happened.

And sometimes the way he had looked at her – as though he wasn't quite sure what to make of her, mixed in with a shy uncertainty that she thought was maybe a remnant of the human Damon, mixed in with something she couldn't name – had given her hope.

They had cooked together and fought together and lived together. They argued with each other constantly, but Bonnie kind of thought that she challenged him as much as he challenged her. And she could feel it during those long slow days…..

She was falling for him.

But she never said a word. She listened to him talk about Elena. She smiled and encouraged him to go back to her, and when the chance presented itself, she hadn't even hesitated.

Sometimes she wished she wasn't so god-awful righteous, because if she had been even a little bit selfish she would have kept Damon here, with her. But she wasn't, and she had made her choice. And there was no use crying over it.

So Bonnie curled up tighter on Damon's bed, and breathed in the scent of him, and tried to convince herself that she didn't miss him, and that she wasn't half in love with him.

Because it would only make the loneliness worse.

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	3. guardian

_Guardian_

**Disclaimer: Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed this story. It is so very appreciated, and I will try and respond individually to you on the weekend. Just know that you are loved. So, this story just kind of keeps going. Apparently Bonnie Bennett has taken over my life! Here's another chapter featuring viewpoints from Bonnie, Damon and Kai. Takes place directly after the last chapter. Enjoy!**

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Witches were guardians.

They were not the servants of nature, no matter what many of them preached. They were servants of what was Right and Just. Yes, that was with a capital letter, because there was only one, and it was a witch's duty to find it and carry it out.

Bonnie's Gran had told her that this was the most important part of being a witch.

"Being a witch is lonely, Bonnie," the warm, older lady had told her granddaughter seriously, at the beginning of Bonnie's studies into witchcraft. "I put off telling you about your abilities because I did not want the burden falling to you until it had to. Most people see only the glamor and the power, but true witchcraft comes from making choices, the right choices."

Bonnie had thought about this carefully because her grandmother never told her anything that wasn't important. "How will I know that the right choice is?" she asked at last, and her grandmother smiled.

"You will have to decide."

"But what if I'm wrong?"

"Sometimes you will be, but the key thing is to make the choice from your heart and your soul and your mind. You pick the best choice available to you in that moment. And you do not regret your choices, you simply learn from them." She hugged Bonnie then. "Remember always, that I love you, and that I am proud of you, no matter what."

Bonnie woke up.

There were tear tracks on her cheeks, the dream had been so real. She realized that she was gripping the bed sheets in her fists, and slowly relaxed her fingers. She was still lying on top of Damon's bed, with his scent all around her. She took an experimental sniff and wanted to curse herself for the fact that it relaxed her a bit, as though he were somehow, in some way, still present. As expected, it was a very masculine scent. Where Stefan was old parchment and old spice, Damon was a scent vaguely like the outdoors on a winter morning, mixed with sandalwood.

She suspected he dabbed the scent on himself, but had never been able to catch him in the act.

She stretched a bit, trying to work out the kinks and sores, and saw that it was once again dark outside. She must have slept the entire day away, but she needed it, and there was no reason to get up anymore. Still, she pushed herself up and wandered down to the kitchen in search of food.

Some of Damon's leftover attempt at pasta bolognaise was still in the fridge. Bonnie sniffed that experimentally as well, decided that it was edible, and finished it up. The moon was high and full in the night sky and it cast and pale white glow over the Salvatore's front lawn. Bonnie went on the front door and down the stoop and into the moonlight. It was like walking in a dream, like she had never woken up. Her feet whispered lightly through the fallen leaves, the trees high above murmured in the breeze, and the stars shone down above her.

She took a deep breath and smiled.

Damon had said one night, that the fact there was a full moon every night was the best part about this prison world, and Bonnie had silently agreed as she stared at his profile in the moon's silvery glow and then had made golden fireflies with her magic. His sudden smile had been worth it, and she had made the fireflies dance around them.

It had been beautiful.

And when she had fallen asleep under the moonlight, he had carried her back inside.

Bonnie had always been intellectual. She loved studying and understanding things logically. But magic wasn't words, it was emotion. Her greatest feats of magic were always based on her anger or her love.

The first year she'd had her powers, she had been very proactive. She had been sure that she knew what was Right. A witch was always most powerful on her home turf, and Bonnie had declared Mystic Falls as hers. It was why she agreed with John Gilbert's plan to burn the vampires in the cellar, and why she had been willing to let Damon die.

But Elena and Stefan and convinced her to let Damon live, and she had decided that two vampires living in her town, as long as they didn't kill anyone, was acceptable. It wasn't like she was friends with the two brothers anyway.

But then Caroline had been turned, and everything had changed.

Bonnie had found herself on the same side as vampires, working with people who sometimes killed humans and sometimes protected them. It was at the end of her first year as a witch that Bonnie began to realize that being a witch wasn't as black and white as she had thought it to be, and she had realized this by watching Damon.

Where she was a guardian, he was a protector. Where she tried to save everyone, he was fiercely loyal to a handful of people to the exclusion of everyone else. But for those handful of people, he would do absolutely anything. He would do the impossible. She had always told herself that she didn't care that she didn't number among this select few; it was only Elena and Stefan after all. And usually Alaric. And once upon a time, Katherine as well.

But not Bonnie Bennett.

She had become unsure of how to categorize him. He was a monster but also a savior, on the side of good, but still capable of so much evil. So she had refrained from taking action against him, and instead occasionally allied with him if it was in the interests of her friends or of what Bonnie needed to do to keep the town safe.

And then the Originals had come.

Bonnie had pulled back, because after all she was only one witch against a family of the most powerful vampires in existence. But she had put her powers to good use protecting her friends, because they helped her keep the Originals in check.

And then there had been Silas and the heretic Traveler witches, and Bonnie had no longer been a witch, but she had still felt like one; she had still wanted to save everyone. And in a way she had.

Her Grams had found peace, Alaric and Tyler and Stefan had come back, and she had even saved Damon.

She had not been sure if he was worthy of being saved, for all that he had grown on her over the years.

"Like a fungus," she muttered to a curious rabbit that had approached her immobile form on the grass. It hopped away in alarm.

Damon had never shone her any other side to his personality except flippancy or rage. Or rather, very rarely had he shone her anything else. Bordering on almost never. There had been their dance where he had tried to save her from Klaus, and then when he had hugged her on that island, but they had been few and far between. But that day where Kai had made Damon tell the story of what the elder Salvatore had done in 1994, caused Bonnie to finally understand why Damon made pancakes every morning, and had enlightened her about many things.

She finally saw in him what Elena and Stefan always maintained was there. She finally saw beneath the masks.

Witches were judges. They were there to stop those who committed acts of evil. But someone who had done bad things but was now doing good? Mostly. Bonnie had been unsure where that left Damon. But when she learned he felt remorse, well the right thing to do was clear. Anyone who felt remorse, and was honestly trying to change for the better, deserved the chance to become better than they had been.

Magic was balance.

It had been the hardest lesson that Bonnie had had to learn.

And when you put vampires into the mix, well, finding a balance in anything was like trying to walk a tightrope blindfolded.

Bonnie had set out to provide a ballast for Damon Salvatore since she had let him live when the other vampires had burned in the cellar. Elena was his consoler, and Stefan his protector, but Bonnie had challenged him to do the right thing.

It was only when she saw his remorse, a remorse shone in a way that he had never even thought to tell her about, that she realized Damon was on a path to redemption. That he was actually becoming a good person.

She smiled a bit, laughed, made golden fireflies appear with her magic, and twirled amidst them under the moonlight. She knew Damon would find her bear. And he would find a way to keep the bear safe, or even a way to get her out. And she knew that he would because Damon was a protector, and she knew without a doubt that she had become a part of his inner circle.

Bonnie had made her choice. She would live with it, as she had always done. She was the savior, not the person who needed saving. She was absurdly proud of this. It was her job as a witch.

But there was this tiny part of her that held onto the hope that Damon would ignore her wishes, and do the impossible.

And save her.

Just this once.

&…&…&…&…&…&

Witches were judgy moralists.

Damon had always respected that about them even as he mocked it.

And the first time Damon had ever had a sex dream involving Bonnie Bennett had been the night where she'd told him that there was still hope for him. He hadn't even realized that he cared about her opinion until then.

Or rather, he knew that she mattered to him, but had had no idea how much.

But when he kissed her under the moonlight, and slowly undressed her before carrying her to bed…..

…he woke up extremely uncomfortable and vowed never to tell this to anyone, especially Elena.

The strange thing was that she had been dressed in a school teacher's outfit…..

Damon had put it off to a one-time fluke based on the fact that she was female and good-looking and the only other person he had been in contact with for months. He was lonely. Sue him.

But then he had found her bear, and that night he had dreamed of returning to the prison world and finding her asleep on his bed and carrying her to safety. And he had known that maybe he was in trouble. He had no idea how he was going to look Jeremy in the eye the next time he saw the kid.

Never mind the fact that Bonnie would probably light his ass on fire before she would let him rescue her. The damn stubborn woman had sent her magic away to keep that psycho Kai in his prison rather than save herself when she next found the opportunity.

He had a feeling she wouldn't approve of any of his insane rescue plans for her either.

Mostly because all of them ended with both her and Kai making it back to the real world.

Of course, he could just kill the upstart bastard as soon as he showed his ugly face on this plane of existence anyway. So Damon was going to ignore Bonnie's wishes, hope she didn't kill him for this later, and rescue her whether she wanted it or not.

Because sometimes – actually most of the time – Bonnie was far too self-sacrificing and moralistic for her own good.

Although Damon had a feeling that once she was back, everything was going to change.

&…&…&…&…&…&

Witches were judge, jury and executioner.

Kai knew that well.

And he remembered it all over again every time he looked into Bonnie Bennett's stern green eyes. Even here, with just the two of them, she had judged him and damned him once again to this prison. Just as his father had done. Just as his twin sister had done as well.

She had sacrificed herself to stop him. He should have taken her up on the offer.

Bonnie had done the same thing, and Kai would have killed her for it as well, except that his own personal hell decried that no one could die here.

So he would be stuck looking at Bonnie Bennett's judgment of him every single day for the rest of eternity, because even when she didn't have her magic anymore, she was still a witch.

Or maybe he wouldn't, because if Kai knew one thing, it was that Bonnie would have sent her magic to her little friend Damon. Kai had seen the way Damon looked at Bonnie, and knew how protective the vampire was of the witch.

Which was a bit weird if you thought about it.

He knew that Damon would come for Bonnie.

And when he did, Kai would be ready.

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Endnote: I kind of feel like this chapter is a mess, but tell me what you think anyway!


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